Why Jamie Briggs, Peter Dutton and Barnaby Joyce have done us a favour

Anne Summers

"Reports had it," writes the esteemed American biographer Stacy Schiff in her new book The Witches: Salem 1692 about the famous witch trials in New England in the 17th century, "that more than 700 witches flew about Massachusetts".

All those women flying about, working as politicians, bureaucrats and journalists, jobs that were once the sole preserve of men.

While many of us think that is a good thing, and something we have actually been fighting for, others seem to be seriously disturbed by what they clearly see as the disruption of the natural order of things.

This past week has revealed the following:

1. Some members of the Turnbull government think the bar has been set too high for ministerial conduct following the forced resignation of Jamie Briggs for obnoxious and unprofessional conduct towards a female diplomat in a Hong Kong bar.

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2. Cabinet minister Peter Dutton texted that the female journalist who criticised both Briggs's behaviour and his mates' attempts to make light of it was a "mad f...ing witch".

3. And Barnaby Joyce, the man seemingly soon to become our deputy prime minister, bemoaned the fact that men can no longer even speak frankly with each other: "It's what one bloke thought he was saying to another bloke," he said of Mr Dutton's text.

These behaviours have attracted a torrent of outrage but I think that Messrs Briggs, Dutton and Joyce have actually done us a favour.

Their conduct is a timely jolt to those of us who might have hoped that sexism and misogyny in politics were relics of the recent past and that the end of the Abbott era has signalled the arrival of a more inclusive and female-friendly time.

Not so.

Neither the numbers nor the default language of so many in the government supports any conclusion other than that the exclusion of women remains core business for the coalition.

Malcolm Turnbull might have increased the numbers of women in his cabinet to five (from Abbott's insulting two) but women still make up only 19.4 per cent of his ministry. Women were 31 per cent of Kevin Rudd's final ministry while they comprised 33 per cent of Gillard's.

All are a far cry from Canada where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on assuming office last November, announced that his cabinet would be 50 per cent women.

Turnbull responded to this news by saying: "In an ideal world you would have 50-50 but we don't have 50-50 men and women in the Parliament."

Neither does Justin Trudeau. Women make up just 27 per cent of his party room yet he opted for over-representation – "because it's 2015".

Women make up only 20.6 per cent of the Coalition party room (compared with 45 per cent for both Labor and the Greens) so Turnbull's degree of difficulty in achieving equality is arguably greater but there is no sign that he is actively working within the Liberal Party to ensure that number increases at the next election.

An opportunity exists in Victoria where there are two Senate vacancies to give a leg-up to women. Victorian MP and former minister in the Howard government, Dr Sharman Stone is campaigning for an all-female ticket (the number two spot which automatically goes to the Nationals is already held by Bridget McKenzie).

"We have to have a long-term affirmative action strategy until we reach our agreed upon proportion of women," she told me this week.

She would like to see the goal as 50 per cent – which is now Labor's policy – but would settle for 45 per cent. With women's representation in the Liberal Party in Canberra currently at 21.8 per cent, neither goal is remotely achievable without concerted intervention by the leadership.

Since the Coalition returned to power in 2013, the proportion of women sitting on government boards has declined from 41.7 per cent to 39.1. The numbers chairing boards has declined, as has the number of women heading up federal government departments.

This is the context, then, in which we should be appraising the language used by Peter Dutton to comment on his colleague's misconduct in Hong Kong.

It is now than five years since Tony Abbott stood at a rally in Canberra in front of signs that described Prime Minister Julia Gillard as "Bob Brown's bitch" and enjoined Australia to "Ditch the witch".

If we thought those days were mercifully behind us, Peter Dutton's words were an ugly wake-up call to the fact that they are not gone and, as far as some people are concerned, nor should they be.

The language used to castigate women is telling.

They are either "bitches" or "witches" or, possibly, both since the terms are not interchangeable.

A bitch, the dictionary tells us, is of course a female dog but it also means a woman who is "belligerent, unreasonable, malicious, a control freak, rudely intrusive or aggressive". These are all terms that are often applied to ambitious women in politics or employment. Uppity women, in other words, pushing their way into worlds that once were closed to them.

(Tellingly, if a man is referred to as a bitch it means he is a subordinate, such as a sexual slave in prison.)

Witches, on the other hand, are seen as using their terrifying female powers to alter the natural order of things.

Witchcraft served an eminently useful purpose in 17th century New England, Stacy Schiff concludes. "The aggravating, the confounding, the humiliating all dissolved in its cauldron. It made sense of the unfortunate and the eerie, the sick child and the rancid butter along with the killer cat. What else, shrugged one husband, could have caused the black and blue marks on his wife's arm?"

Messrs Briggs, Dutton, Joyce and their ilk have been accused this week of "not getting it".

I disagree.

They get it all right. They just don't like it and will do all they can to stop those bitches and witches from ruining their smug comfortable little world.